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‘Down with Hlophe’

March 11 2008 at 10:45AM

Thousands of Joe Slovo residents have vowed to resist being evicted from the informal settlement after the Cape High Court ordered that they vacate the land intended for the N2 Gateway housing project.

Cape Judge President John Hlophe said that the residents had a constitutional right to adequate housing. But he stressed that they did not have a right to a locality of their choice.

Hlophe said the temporary accommodation the government had provided for them in Delft was “far better” than the shacks they lived in.

Once the Langa houses intended for them have been completed, they will be able to move back into better quality homes “and a community where overcrowding is a thing of the past, where fire dangers are much less, where proper water facilities are led to the houses, sewerage facilities are in place and where floods could leave lesser damage if any at all after the soil has been rehabilitated and stronger, more steady houses have been built”.

Hlophe said the residents’ concerns about the use of asbestos at the temporary accommodation were “without substance”.

But the thousands of residents who gathered outside the high court on Monday have refused to move.

“We are not going to Delft,” they shouted outside the building.

And at a community meeting in Joe Slovo on Monday night, about 500 residents gathered on an open plot of land to hear representatives from the Joe Slovo Task Team and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign speak about the court’s ruling.

They sang and danced, chanting “Down with (housing minister) Lindiwe Sisulu” and “Down with Hlophe”.

Uniformed police were not at the meeting, though a lone armoured Casspir was parked near the N2 Gateway construction site.

Mzwanele Zulu, spokesperson for the Joe Slovo Task Team, promised that the community would take the case as far as the Constitutional Court to fight being evicted from the area.

Zulu said: “By this order, Hlophe and the others have declared war on the people of Joe Slovo and must take responsibility for the consequences.”

Zulu said the order endorsed the bureaucratic madness of removing people to Delft who did not want to be there. The judgment follows an application by Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, housing agents Thubelisha Homes and local government and housing MEC Richard Dyantyi to evict the 20 000 residents from the land next to the N2 to make way for the next phase of the N2 Gateway Project.

Judge Hlophe said the court was aware of the housing crisis in South Africa and could not turn a blind eye to it. However, he said the removal of the residents would not render them homeless, assuring them that the move was for their benefit.

He added that the state was not attempting to re-enact the apartheid ghost of forced removals from the past but that it was merely complying with its constitutional obligations to provide adequate housing.

This case is not about normal eviction. It is a strategic relocation of Joe Slovo residents and although this is not required of the applicants, they subject themselves to judicial supervision and to report back on the progress and faults experienced during the implementation and fulfilment of this pilot project, he said.

Judge Hlophe also commented on the submission that
the residents had a legitimate expectation that the houses to be developed at Joe Slovo, or at least 70 percent of them, would be available to them.

But he said that there was no merit in this argument and that unlawful conduct could not give rise to a legitimate expectation. Judge Hlophe ordered the residents to vacate the area in accordance with a schedule, which starts on March 17 and ends on January 19, 2009.

He also directed the government and Thubelisha Homes to file affidavits with the court every eight weeks to report back on the implementation of the order.

He gave the sheriff the authority to eject the residents. On September 10, last year members of the Joe Slovo community barricaded the N2 highway to protest their removal to Delft when they did not succeed in their negotiations with the national housing department and Thubelisha Homes.

This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Times on March 11, 2008